A long List of Thanks

oil on linen

Thanks for taking the time to visit and comment on my Blog. I am so thankful for all the input and inspiration as well as meeting kindred spirits along the road of Art Making. Blessings to you all and I hope you spend this years Thanksgiving with loved ones.

I'd say , we suffer and we strive,
Not less or more as men than boys:
With grizzled beards at forty-five,
As erst at twelve in corduroys,
And if, in time of sacred youth,
We learned at home to love and pray,
Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth
May never wholly pass away.

from The End of the Play , Thackeray 1811-1863

Frank P. Ordaz

What Dreams may come...

oil on panel



Dear Reader,

Its been a while but I have not been sleeping and I don't mean that in the literal sense. Or rather I've been pondering the sweetest sleep and some arcane philosophical rumminations from Nietzsche. Now I know that sounds a bit high falatulent but really, the other day I was up in bed with my laptop and decided to review Nietzsche's free spirited book called " Human All Too Human" . Sometimes I wonder if thinking too much affected his "essential man". I like thinking but I also feel we were designed for movement and activity.

In his book which I am reading online he discusses everything from Religion to Art . His thoughts on Art are thought provoking at the very least whether I agree with him or not. But what caught my attention and how it relates to my topic at hand was that he observed that with the death of God and Religion that Art had and would fill the void left by their absence. Of course this is theoretical and really only applies to those individuals who wanted and needed something besides God to worship and praise. He felt that man would continually evolve to a more moral and scientific man ( we are talking 1878 ) . Of course we know now how that turned out! But he felt that all those impulses that were felt by the man of Religion and the old philosophy would be replaced with newer evolved sentiments.

Here is a sampling of Zarathustra...

the slow arrow of beauty. The most noble kind of beauty is that which does not carry us away suddenly, whose attacks are not violent or intoxicating (this kind easily awakens disgust), but rather the kind of beauty which infiltrates slowly, which we carry along with us almost unnoticed, and meet up with again in dreams; finally, after it has for a long time lain modestly in our heart, it takes complete possession of us, filling our eyes with tears, our hearts with longing.
What do we long for when we see beauty? To be beautiful. We think much happiness must be connected with it. But that is an error.

Like I said, he has some interesting insights and here is the crux of the matter. Nietzsche disputes that the way we feel now will in any way be constant for man in the future or that those feelings and sensations of modern man have anything in common with man in Roman Times for example. He states that there are no absolutes and that belief in any universal binding notion of man as man is error. I know that this is an oversimplification but I am writing in mass strokes to get to the point which is that man's nature , as complicated as he makes himself out to be , and regardless how men like Nietzsche thinks he can change...remains unchanged as to desires.

When I saw my son sleeping on his bed years ago I stopped and observed something beautiful. His sleep was so pure and innocent. It was sublime and the light from the suns early rays illuminated his face as if he was posed like a model for the great Raphael. How i envied his tranquility. I did not sense that he worried about anything. What was he dreaming and what was the inner world of a 2 year old? Often times I am robbed of sleep because I am going over plans and to do lists. Other times an ache or torment robs me of my rest. Oh to sleep and dream the rhapsodic visions of my little David. How I would trade places with you at times. Bills and interest rates and sales...what are these but beguiling demons?

If you are reading this and identify with what I am saying and have also looked at awe at your child as they sleep then we both share a common drama that I am certain has been experienced by others past and will be by others future.The image of a child in sweet sleep is beautiful. And in seeing that beauty I am all the richer...and much happiness is connected with it and that is no error. Nietzsche is dead...thank God!

The Psychology of Sales

Grandma is one of those Right Wing Glen Beck Types.


Dear Reader,

Sales is an artform. The movie "GlenGary GlenRoss " was a dramatic depiction of the cut throat methods used by griseled salesmen selling customers real estate they didn't need. There was the subtle "dream the dream" angle to the aggressive..." You can't let opportunity slip away" . You get the picture.

During the Tour, I noticed a phenomena of sales that is well known in the ranks but was acted out in front of me 2 years in a row now. I have seen sales of paintings when there are at least 3 groups in the room. Somehow , that number seems to generate a form of kinetic energy of movement around my paintings. I want to preface this by saying , with Jana and I in the " Gallery" room we pretty much fill the space. So I guess what I'm saying is that there has been a feeling of a crowd. As one person becomes interested and inquires and buys , then someone else jumps in and makes a decision to purchase as well.

Last year, I pulled out these old curriculum illustrations that I had done for a publisher years ago. I had already been payed for these small oils and I just wanted to move them. I placed them in my " bargain bin" area of the gallery and marked them for $50 to $100. If you bought more than 3 I brought the price down. Customers started looking at these and talking and soon I was selling a whole bunch of these. I literally have hundreds of these 6 x 9 illustrations gathering dust.

It seemed that seeing someone buy was like smelling a barbeque. The fumes of cooked red meat registers a primal desire and the stomach and brain responds....I'm hungry for a thick slab of Angus Beef Darlin....! I sensed that a purchase transaction witnessed by a group validates any hesitation that someone may have about a piece of artwork. It must be good they reason ...someone like me is buying. I'll buy too. I guess that is why auctioneers have been known to grease the wheel and have someone start the bidding. I guess its also the same at a party and waiting for a group brave enough to get on the dance floor and strut their stuff.

I did not feature these curriculum images this year as I wanted buyers to buy the plein airs and portraits. But I still brought them out and mentioned it to those that I felt might be interested. I did not sell one of these images this year. But they were a big hit last year....go figure.





This is what I think of your paintings Mr. Ordaz!




Hey Sally, There is no such thing as an absolute truth!




I lost the cat...but did I check the Washer/Dryer?



Thats where the Jesus music comes from.... This was my view when I lived in San Anselmo . Ca. This intersection is called the Hub. There is no church down there. If you swung 90 degrees to the right we would see George Lucas's Victorian Mansion above 4th Street.



What would Paris Hilton do?

2009 Placer Arts Tour RoundUp

18 x 24 oil on panel


Athough this painting freaked out a friend of mine , My painting of "Job" was a big hit at the Tour. He asked me why is he staring that way. I told him that the painting is not 100% finished and that it depicts Job from the Old Testament. I am going to add a crack that will steak across one of the sides to indicate his world will soon turn upside down. One day we are fine and the next day brings untold challenges. That is Life.




Greetings All,

The Tour is officially over and we had a wonderful time meeting new friends and showing and talking about Art. The first day was a bit slow but I would say almost 90% were other artists wanting to connect and see what I was up to. It was a fruitful day as I signed up 12 potential students. Scott Schumaker performed songs from his new CD on Saturday afternoon and again we saw many interested tour goers.

All in All, I sold 8 paintings , 20 students signed up for classes and 3 families requested a portrait .

Thanks to all of you that showed up and who were very enthusiastic about my scribblings. It does not go unappreciated!





Scott Schumaker performs







Jana primping for the camera instead of selling paintings...

Chet Baker Mood

5 x 7 oil on panel sold



9 x 12 oil sketch sold



Well, Jana and I just about have got ourselves organized and we started to mellow out. Of course, in my opinion, nothing puts you in that laid back mood like Chet Baker. As I heard him sing his breathy vocals I remembered this old You Tube Video of an old car caravan and I wanted to paint one of those Ford Fairlanes.....soo into painting I can't help myself

Ordaz Yard Sale...oops...Studio Tour Tomorrow!

It's down to the wire and I still am expecting some frames to arrive today for the larger pieces.

I have no idea what to expect this year, but one thing I am sure of is that it will be a great time to meet new people and share my love of Art and Life.

blessings

Placer Arts Tour Set up

We interrupt regular programming to get ready for the 2009 Placer Arts Studio Tour. If you are in the Area...I hope to see you!

So many paintings...so little wall space.

Tiffany Chalice

5 x 7 oil on panel


This is probably the last Tiffany glass object I will paint for a while. I don't have anymore reference photos from the DeYoung . I wanted to create this subtle mood of ochre with the illuminated shadow on the background. So I just used Ultramarine Blue with Yellow Ochre with hints of Terra Rossa in the darker values. When I had the values right , I went in with my Cad Yellows to strengthen the luminous quality of the chalice.

Crowned Glory

5 x 7 oil on panel

I just love the translucence of this shell. Its magical and sexy all in one. I can't help but marvel at the design and texture of this undersea crown. This is the third time I have painted this and I'm still not satisfied with the effort. The colors on this shiny surface still eludes me. It reflects and transmits light at the same time. Most notebly the translucent area as it wraps a natural blanket around it's frame. And to think a creature once called this home.

Round Up

Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, A Woman from Bern, Switzerland, 1887




Dear Reader,

I discovered Peter Fiore on someones Blog and I was impressed by the consistent good quality of his landscape paintings. Below is his profile description on his Blog.


Peter Fiore grew up in New Jersey and studied at Pratt and the Art Students League. He has recently been featured as an "Artist to Watch" in Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine along with being featured in American Artist and The Artist's Magazine. He won first place for his landscape painting in The Artist's Magazine's 2007 Annual Competition as well as being a finalist in the Art Renewal Center's Annual Competition. John O'Hern, of American Art Collector, likens Peter to a Bodhisattva, "one who works for the enlightenment of all sentient beings." Mr. O'Hern goes on to say "the best artists are those who tune into the vastness of creation, find beauty in unexpected places, and present it through their skill to impact even the most jaded viewer." Fiore teaches at the School of Visual Arts, in NYC. His work is represented by the Travis Gallery, in New Hope, PA; Brazier Fine Art, in Richmond, VA; Kerygma Gallery, in Ridgewood, NJ; Cavalier Galleries, in Greenwich, CT; and The Banks Gallery, in New London, NH.

This ten minute video is a must see as he shows you how he produces a small sketch from start to finish. Notice how much paint he puts on his brush and how he skillfully uses the palette knife. I learned alot just watching this demo....5 stars

Also..Underpaintings had a guessing hands from famous paintings contest. The paintings that Matthew selected were inspired. You gotta see these portraits. The painting above is one of my favorites. 5 stars.

Abstract in V Minor

11 x 14 oil on linen board


I really love paintings that show a definite abstraction as well as signifying a known object. I had a definite stream of consciousness going here as the effervescent qualities of the Tiffany Vessels were also present on this dump site on the American River. There was much industrial pillage of the natural resources on either side Of the American River Gorge near Auburn. When bridge construction was no longer useful the company mining the earth just heaved their iron work constructions into the river. However...one can turn an ugly incident into an interesting image. I'll do one more in this series. I am very curious how Studio Tour Audiences will take to these images.....hmmmmm

Post Rocker places

Well..... I entered this portrait in the Fine Arts Online October Competition and I just received an email that I placed in the top %15. I guess that means that the actual winners will be judged from this group. Click here to se the stiff competition.

Reflected Light 2 ...The Underpainting

Dear Reader,

How a painting is done is as important as the subject matter itself. I tend to disagree with some artists that the subject is secondary and should take a back seat. Why should it be either /or? I just read an Art Book recently where the artist claimed that the subject matter was insignificant to the art. What really mattered , he claimed , was the artist's interpretation and rendition of his experience. I agree with that statement on many levels but not in the extreme. It has a Kantian ring to it. For those who have not studied German Philosophy, Emmanuel Kant is famous for positing that we cannot really know a " thing in itself" . The best we can do is communicate our sensory experience of it. Many artists wittingly or unwittingly have followed this dictum in their art. The problem I see is that it can destroy the " subject" in the extreme and produce an expressionistic worldview. What I mean by that is that I " proJect my thoughts and feelings" unto my subject and that that perception becomes my truth and reality. Think of it as Mel Gibson in the Movie " Conspiracy Theory". You can be loony tunes if you take this view to the extreme but like a stopped clock you can be right once in awhile....or you end up like Larry David's misanthropic character in Woody Allen's movie " Whatever Works".

Now what does that have to do with Reflected Light 2. Nothing..absolutely nothing.. Its early and I'm still in my quasi dream state stream of consciousness rant....

Now back to the subject at hand....If you have been painting for awhile, you will find that you will choose a method that you find " strengthens" your means of communicating your thoughts in paint. Some find the immediate Alla Prima the best approach for their statement while others find a more academic approach with layers of oil glazing better suits their style. It really only matters to you.

I have posted the painting above as an example of an underpainting technique that helps achieve a unified sense of color and reflected light. I can't remember the artists name , but this picture hangs at the De Young Museum in San Francisco and it is partly finished. However, the artist's stopping point adds to our benefit. We can actually see how he achieved his effect of light streaming in through a window and lighting his figures. Notice on the figure on the far right how he has scumbled the paint and let some of the underpainting peek on through. This gives that illusion of light bouncing into the shadow areas. I find it fascinating that he has finished his light areas first. The scene out the window and the characters around the window receive the finished treatment. There was an old illustrators trick that went like this ...keep your light areas opaque and your shadow areas as transparent as possible to get as much brilliance and glow in your painting. This advice really worked when your painting had to be photographed and reproduced.

Sometimes we have to be like the dog in this painting and " sniff out" how something is done and learn and see if it can benefit us and SOLVE a problem we are possibly struggling with.

Tiffany in Blue

So why are you painting these Tiffany Vases in an hour Frank? Well, I plan to sell these 9 x 7 oils at my Studio Tour and the starting price point will be $150 . So if I can get that price for an hours time then its okay with me.

Same technique and these are really fun to paint. Again, this vase is on display at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. I changed its environment and gave it a cool cast. There is another vase to end this set that will also have a cool color scheme.



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Reflected Light

sold




I pained these yesterday giving myself an hour deadline for each. I wanted to explore the reflected light on these Tiffany Vases that were at the De Young Museum. Objects d' art have always attracted me. Tiffany explored and created the standard of the beautiful vase in America.

There is a trick to painting these rather quickly. If you are interested just post a comment and if there is any interest I will add it to the post. And no...it does not involve pre mixing strings of color.



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Okay. As Jeremy said so succinctly.." I like Tricks". For those of us who have been painting for years, the surface of the canvas is very important. How it is prepared will affect, for better or for worse, your painting. If you are slack about the ground or if you begin to paint on a canvas you bought at the art store you may not be painting on the best surface. I still prepare all my store bought canvases.

Let's say you paint on gesso. Regardless of the amount of layers you apply , when you start painting, the oil paint takes a while to set and get absorbed into the ground. You will be able to tell after 20 minutes or so when the paint starts to " float" and at that point it is very easy to affect paint strokes . If you want to eliminate this "sink" time may I suggest this trick....

Using Mars Black acrylic and titanium white acrylic, mix a grey that approximates the dominate value of your painting. In the case above. I mixed a grey that matched the background. What you will find is that the oil paint " floats" on the surface of the acrylic and the oils don't have to set as they do on gesso ground or oil ground. Its an amazing phenomena. We used this technique alot at LucasFilm in the Matte Dept . We would mix sky colors or whatever in acrylics and then when it was right we painted over it in oils.

The rest is just plain ol' observation and separation of the lights and darks in masses. Since the grey matched my background, I matched my color to the value . This cut down alot of guess work and approximation. The palette is fairly limited....Yellow Ochre , Terra Rosa , Chrome Green , Burnt Sienna . THEN at the end I will add the CADS . yellow or Red for that extra chroma to make the painting sing. Also...I use the largest brush possible that still gives me the ability to make detailed strokes. The size of the brush is usually dictated by the size of the canvas.

Try it...the trick is not to make the grey TOO dark....otherwise you might end up being one of those black velvet painters. You are in good company if you use this technique. Nelson Shanks has his students work on an acrylic paint ground surface.

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Portrait .... quick study

9 x 7 oil on linen board






Reflected light can be tricky, but if you consider the planes and locate and gauge the reflected light you can make a good go of it. In this case the sitter is in the shadow and receives abundant ambient blue light from the sky. Then there is a reflected light source coming from my concrete driveway that is off to the left of the model. Both of these light sources have to be considered if you want the painting to feel like light and have an outdoors feel as opposed to an interior studio look.

Notice the yellow ochre of the light source bouncing up to the left side of the face. It has to feel consistent. To make the face feel round you must consider that the face in this case is turning away from that warm light. It is still a warm tone but it is cooler than the plane that directly is affected by the reflected light. In this example all the side planes will be warmer that those planes that are at 90 degrees to the ambient blue sky. Its a good practice to slightly ( or abruptly ) exaggerate this phenomena to give the illusion of light.

Portrait..Little Jude

8 x 10 oil on linen

Have you ever met a mini adult? Well, my friends son Jude is an adult stuck in the body of a ten year old. He is probably one of the most precocious kids I have met in recent memory. He mugged for me after he came up for a brief reprieve from swimming in the pool.

Colors around the pool are so much fun and give me license to play with bright colors. The colors you see in the background are also integrated into the form of the figure. The values are just keyed down and kept as bright as possible without stepping out of the valued range of shadow. The paint is applied fairly thick throughout and Gamblin"s " Flake White Replacement" is a nice gummy white that really helps me get that thick look.

If you are interested in how to "approach" a portrait where there is a distinct reflected light source, then just let me know. I will then comment on the process of seeing the color temperature patterns and keeping them grouped in masses in the proper plane. A bit tricky, but the process will help you keep the painting unified.

Here is a thought that I grabbed from the Van Gogh Blog. Vincent is remarking about the bright light in Java and how it affects the shadows. Check out his last two sentences....

"Only there are several people who call themselves Impressionists who don’t have his knowledge of the figure, and it’s precisely that, that knowledge of the figure, that will later come back up to the surface and that he’ll always benefit from. I very much want to get to know them one day, De Haan and Isaäcson. If ever they came here, Gauguin would certainly say to them: go to Java and do some Impressionism. Because Gauguin, while he works hard here, always has a nostalgic longing for hot countries. And there you are, it’s undeniable that if one came to Java, for example, with the preoccupation to work there with colour, one would see a heap, a whole heap, of new things. Then in those brighter countries under the stronger sun, the shaded parts as well as the shadow cast by objects and figures become completely different, and the coloration is so intense that one’s tempted quite simply to suppress it. That’s already happening here."

I painted this portrait as a sample for the Placer Arts Studio Tour Nov 13 , 14 and 15.